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Dobson giving up helm of Focus on the Family

James Dobson resigned as chairman of Focus on the Family, the Colorado Springs-based media ministry he founded 32 years ago. Dobson and his wife Shirley, lower left, listen to his new replacement, Jim Daly, answer question for the media at Focus on the Family in Colorado Springs. (RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post)

Evangelical Christian icon James Dobson has resigned as chairman of the international media ministry Focus on the Family, yet the voice of this key architect of the religious right will still be heard in American homes and political theater, he told followers Friday.

Dobson told the 950 Focus on the Family employees at their monthly chapel services this week that he wasn't "limping away" but stepping aside for a new generation of leaders whom he had handpicked.

Tens of millions of Christian baby boomers grew up listening to the radio broadcasts of this avuncular family therapist with a doctorate in early-childhood development.

The 72-year-old Dobson has held that America's political and social values should be firmly rooted in Christian tradition — a theme that built the Colorado Springs-based ministry he founded 32 years ago into a media giant.

Over the decades, Dobson became a political activist fiercely opposed to gay marriage, abortion, pornography and unfettered reproductive rights.

Dobson told his board Wednesday that, although healthy and feeling energetic, he wanted to lighten his administrative burdens and devote more time to grandparenting.

Focus spokesman Gary Schneeberger said Dobson will keep his campus office and continue his flagship "Focus on the Family" radio broadcast for an estimated 1.5 million listeners.

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He will continue writing a newsletter that circulates to 1.6 million people.

"I'm not going anywhere," Dobson told the staff. "My voice will still be strong."

New Life megachurch pastor Brady Boyd said Dobson will continue to hold significant sway over the evangelical community.

"Dobson set the stage and built the platform for all the rest of us," Boyd said. "His body of work will go down as some of the best ever written about families and raising children."

Dobson has been one of the biggest and longest-lasting forces shaping American social values, said Michael Lindsay, Rice University sociologist and author of the book "Faith in the Halls of Power."

Dobson recently became directly involved in presidential contests. In 2004, George W. Bush received Dobson's first presidential endorsement in an election for which the evangelical vote was deemed critical. Last year Dobson supported Republican candidate John McCain because, he said, Barack Obama's election could be disastrous for the nation because of, among other things, his support for abortion rights and some gay rights.

Dobson's critics also weighed in Friday.

"For more than 20 years James Dobson has used his expansive, well-funded media platform to promote defamatory and false information about the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people," said Neil G. Giuliano, president of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.

Dobson's influence is waning with young evangelicals, who are more accepting of same-sex unions and willing to broaden the Christian political agenda beyond opposition to legal abortion, Lindsay said.

Dobson, whose ministry laid off more than 200 employees in the fall to stick to a $138 million annual budget, will continue to write the ministry's monthly appeal letter for donations, which sharply declined last year.

"Today's move by Dobson is significant," Lindsay said, "as the latest example of how the lions of the religious right who came to power in the 1970s and 1980s are passing out of the limelight."

Dobson said in a statement that his resignation was the next step in his six-year plan to transfer leadership. He had handed over executive leadership to Don Hodel in 2003 and then to current president Jim Daly in 2005.

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